THE   NEXT   STEP   IN 
EVOLUTION 


V    ^f'^"* 

^G(e/VeSBi 

f    t&vofufion 

The  Present  St 


"  Come  unto  Me  all  yd  that  labor 
And  are  heavy  laden."1 


\C    SvofiOion, 

The  Present  Step 


I.K.FUNK.D.D.LLD. 


FUNK6WAGNALLS  COMPANY" 

PUBLISHERS 
NEW  YORK  6  CONDON 


COPYRIGHT,  1902 

BY 
FUNK  &  WAGNALLS  COMPANY 

[Printed  in  the  United  States  of  A  merica  ] 
Published  in  November,  7902. 


PREFACE 


THIS  brief  study  in  evolution 
appeared  first  about  a  year  ago  as 
an  introduction  to  a  revival  of  the 
story  of  George  Croly's  "Sala- 
thiel,"  rechristened  "  Tarry  Thou 
Till  I  Come." 

The  study  has  been  so  favorably 
received  by  some  whose  judgment 
I  esteem  that  I  have  ventured  to 
recast  it  somewhat,  enlarging  it 
here  and  there,  and  to  send  it 
abroad  in  its  present  form. 


THE  NEXT  STEP  IN 
EVOLUTION 


IN  the  legend  of  the  Wander- 
ing Jew,  the  words  "  Tarry  Thou 
Till  I  Coine  "  smote  the  offender 
like  successive  thunder-claps,  tho 
uttered  without  the  noise  of 
speech.  At  once  a  doom  and  a 
prophecy — this  Jesus,  now  climb- 
ing Calvary  to  His  death,  would 
come  again,  and  the  Jew  could 
not  perish  from  the  earth  until 
His  coming. 

Dr.  George  Croly  based  his 
story  "  Salathiel,"  or  "  Tarry  Thou 
Till  I  Come,"  on  this  old,  pathetic 
legend.  He  believed  that  "The 
Wandering  Jew  " — typical  of  the 
9 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

Jewish  race — is  about  to  end  his 
wearisome  journeyings,  as  Christ 
is  soon  to  come.* 

*  It  has  been  believed  by  many  from 
the  early  ages  of  the  Christian  era  that 
among  the  signs  of  Christ's  coming 
would  be  the  recognition  of  Him  by 
the  Jews  as  "one  sent  of  the  Father," 
and  that  they  would  then  be  restored 
to  the  Father's  favor ;  that  this  recog- 
nition would  be  accompanied  by  a  re- 
colonization  of  the  Jews  in  Palestine ; 
that  from  this  vantage-ground  they,  as 
a  nation  among  nations — the  "  inherent 
genius  of  the  Jews  for  things  religious" 
again  reasserting  itself — would  lead  the 
nations  of  the  earth  in  final  triumph 
into  the  kingdom  of  the  spiritual  man. 

Prof.  R.  Gottheil,  of  Columbia  Uni- 
versity, and  president  of  the  Federa- 
tion of  American  Zionists,  said,  before 
the  Zionist  Congress,  in  the  summer  of 
1900,  in  London:  "It  is  time  the  na- 
tions understood  our  motives.  Our 
purpose  is  to  colonize  Palestine.  We 
political  Zionists  desire  a  charter  from 
the  Sultan  authorizing  us  to  settle  in 
our  Holy  Land,  and  we  ask  the  Powers 
to  approve  and  protect  this  charter." 
10 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

That  the  Christ  is  coming,  and 
that  this  coming  is  near  at  hand, 
is  believed  to-day  by  millions. 

He  is  coming — but  how? 

Hear  Him: 

The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  like 
unto  leaven  which  a  woman  hid  in 
three  measures  of  meal,  till  the 
whole  was  leavened — the  life  and 
nature  of  the  leaven  reappearing 
in  the  quickened  mass. 

Again : 

The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  like 
a  grain  of  mustard-seed,  the  least 
of  all  seeds,  so  little  that  it  is 
likely  to  be  lost  sight  of  in  the 
count  of  forces;  but  it  has  life 
in  it,  and  the  power  to  grow 
and  multiply,  and  it  spreads  its 
branches  in  every  direction,  each 
laden  with  seeds — the  life  and 
nature  of  the  first  grain  reappear- 
ing in  every  one  of  the  myriads  of 
grains. 

11 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

And  again : 

The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  as 
if  a  man  should  cast  seed  into 
the  ground ;  and  it  should  spring 
up  and  grow,  he  knoweth  not 
how;  first  the  blade,  then  the 
ear,  after  that  the  full  corn  in 
the  ear.  It  is  all  natural:  the 
earth  does  its  work;  the  sun, 
the  air,  the  water  do  their  work, 
and  the  life  and  nature  of  the 
seed  grow  and  multiply,  reappear- 
ing in  each  grain  in  exact  accord- 
ance with  the  nature  of  the  seed. 
It  is  natural,  but  marvelous :  the 
man  "  knoweth  not  how  "  it  is 
done ;  but  no  one  says,  therefore, 
that  that  growth  is  supernatural, 
miraculous. 

Whence  the  germ  of  life  in  the 
seed?  Whence  the  germ  of  life 
in  the  kingdom  of  heaven?  Who 
can  tell?  The  wind  bloweth 
where  it  listeth.  Thou  seest  the 
12 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

effect  of  it,  but  canst  not  tell 
whence  it  cometh,  nor  whither  it 
goeth.  So  is  life,  wherever  you 
find  it,  whether  at  the  birth  of  a 
yeast-plant,  of  grains  of  nmstard- 
seed  and  of  corn,  or  at  the  birth  of 
the  natural  and  spiritual  man. 
But  the  leaven,  and  the  grains  of 
mustard-seed  and  of  corn,  and  the 
kingdoms  of  the  natural  and  the 
spiritual  man,  grow  and  reach  per- 
fection by  natural  processes — that 
is,  in  harmony  with  cause  and 
effect  —  each  process  subject  to 
critical  and  scientific  analysis,  if 
that  analysis  goes  deep  enough, 
and  wide  enough,  and  far 
enough. 

Life  reappears  in  new  life.  The 
leaven  and  the  seed  and  the  Christ 
life  all  reincarnate  themselves  in 
more  leaven,  more  seed,  more  of 
the  Christ  life.  "In  that  day," 
said  Jesus,  "  ye  shall  know  that  I 
am  in  you."  Those  who  study 
13 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

the  New  Testament  can  not  but 
be  impressed  with  how  often  and 
under  how  many  forms  is  there 
uttered  the  thought  Christ  formed 
in  you. 

This  is  the  coming  of  Christ. 
Not  that  it  is  the  only  coming; 
many  millions  of  earnest  men  and 
women  believe  that  in  the  near 
future  He  will  come  in  a  way  pal- 
pable to  our  physical  senses  as 
He  came  nineteen  hundred  years 
ago.  "Ye  men  of  Galilee,  why 
stand  ye  gazing  up  into  heaven? 
This  same  Jesus,  which  is  taken 
up  from  you  into  heaven,  shall  so 
come  in  like  manner  as  ye  have 
seen  him  go  into  heaven "  (Acts 
i.  11). 

Yet  experiences  on  the  physical 
plane  are  of  little  comparative 
value — comparative.  Jesus  bade 
the  doubting  Thomas  to  reach 
forth  his  hand  and  touch  Him, 
14 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

that  lie  might  have  tangible  evi- 
dence :  Now,  Thomas,  you  believe 
because  you  have  seen  and  felt; 
but  blessed  is  he  who  believes  on 
the  higher  plane  of  spiritual  know- 
ing. It  is  "  an  evil  and  adulter- 
ous generation  "  that  seeketh  after 
proofs  of  spiritual  things  on  the 
sensuous  level.  Men  saw  and 
touched  Jesus  in  Palestine  who 
were  millions  of  miles  from  Him. 
Were  Christ  to  appear  in  visible 
form,  it  might  easily  be  of  no 
value  whatever  to  come  into  phys- 
ical contact  with  Him,  to  meet 
Him  on  Broadway  or  on  the 
Strand ;  but  who  can  measure  the 
value  of  having  Christ  recreated 
in  himself,  as  the  leaven  is  recre- 
ated in  the  meal,  and  as  a  seed  is 
recreated  in  new  seed,  so  that  men, 
when  they  see  that  man,  and  talk 
to  him,  and  deal  with  him,  shall 
feel  that  they  have  been  with 
Christ? 

15 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

One  day  I  saw  in  a  neighbor's 
flower-bed  a  little  plant,  that, 
as  it  pushed  its  way  above  the 
ground,  had  brought  with  it  the 
mother  seed  from  which  it  grew. 
That  was  a  literal  reappearance 
of  the  planted  seed;  but  it  was 
not  the  reappearance,  not  the  res- 
urrection of  the  seed,  for  which  a 
seed  grows. 

Christ  came  the  first  time  into 
men's  vision  by  coming  on  the 
plane  of  their  senses;  He  comes 
the  second  time  into  men's  vision 
by  lifting  them  up  to  His  plane  of 
spiritual  comprehension. 

This  coming  of  Christ  involves 
a  new  birth,  a  new  creation,  a 
new  kingdom.  It  means  a  new 
step  in  the  evolution  of  man.  As 
man  has  stepped  from  the  mineral 
kingdom  to  the  vegetable  king- 
dom, and  from  the  vegetable  king- 
dom to  the  animal  kingdom,  and 
16 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

from  the  animal  kingdom  to  the 
kingdom  of  the  natural  man,*  so 
now  he  steps  from  the  kingdom  of 
the  natural  man  to  the  kingdom 
of  the  spiritual  man,  every  portion 
of  this  step  a  natural  process  sub- 
ject to  critical  scientific  analysis, 
if  that  analysis  goes  deep  enough, 
wide  enough,  far  enough.  It  is 
the  continuance  of  evolution  with- 
out a  break,  without  a  leap  ("Na- 
ture never  makes  leaps,"  says 
Leibnitz ;  the  leaps  are  only  seem- 
ing), lifting  the  race  by  a  new 
birth  through  Christ,  the  type- 
life,  up  to  the  plane  of  spiritual 
being  and  knowing. 

Is  the  visible  second  coming  of 
Jesus  fancy  or  truth?  Increasing 
multitudes  to-day  believe  it  true. 

*  This  is  simply  a  name ;  both  king- 
doms, that  of  the  natural  man  and  that 
of  the  spiritual  man,  are  in  harmony 
with  the  laws  of  sequence. 
3  17 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

Among  these  are  many  of  the 
foremost  Christian  teachers  of  this 
generation,  as  that  quartette  of 
great  preachers  recently  dead, 
Charles  H.  Spurgeon,  Newman 
Hall,  A.  J.  Gordon,  and  Dwight 
L.  Moody;  Theodore  Monod, 
Arthur  T.  Pierson,  F.  B.  Meyer, 
J.  H.  Brookes,  C.  Cuthbert  Hall. 
There  is  evidently  near  at  hand 
a  notable  revival  of  this  belief. 


THE  ESSENTIAL  COMING 
OF  CHRIST 


This  coming  is  in  harmony  with 
the  laws  of  sequence  and  conti- 
nuity. 

Each  of  the  successive  steps  or 
kingdoms  has  had  its  type-life. 
The  plant — that  is,  the  physical 
basis  of  the  plant  life — came  from 
the  inorganic  matter ;  the  animal 
— that  is,  the  physical  basis  of  the 
animal  life — came  from  the  plant 
and  through  the  plant  from  the 
mineral  kingdom ;  the  natural  man 
— that  is,  the  physical  basis  of 
the  life  of  the  natural  man — came 
from  the  animal  and  the  kingdoms 
below  it ;  the  spiritual  man — that 
is,  the  physical  basis  of  the  life 
19 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

of  the  spiritual  man — comes  from 
the  natural  man  and  the  kingdoms 
below  him. 

The  development  from  kingdom 
to  kingdom  was  a  natural  unfold- 
ing ;  yet  the  new  creature  of  the 
next  higher  order  always  came 
through  a  new  birth — a  double 
birth:  (1)  the  birth  of  the  new 
type-life  of  the  next  higher  king- 
dom into  the  evolutionary  order 
of  nature,  through  the  hereditary 
chain ;  and  (2)  the  birth  of  each 
individual  into  this  type-life. 

Let  us  attempt  to  climb  quickly 
as  may  be  the  spiral  stairway  of 
the  evolution  of  man,  from  plat- 
form to  platform— kingdom  to 
kingdom. 

FIRST  STEP  IN  LIFE,  The 

Vegetable  Kingdom. — After  ages 

of  preparation  in  the   inorganic 

world,  the  material  which  sup- 

20 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

plies  the  physical  basis  of  the 
vegetable  life — vegetable  proto- 
plasm— was  ripened  through  the 
marvelous  chemistry  of  nature. 
But  when  all  was  ready  for  the 
plant,  whence  came  the  plant  life? 
Scientists  are  now  practically 
unanimous  in  saying  that  there  is 
not  a  scintilla  of  evidence  that 
the  inorganic  or  mineral  world 
has  ever  evolved  a  plant  life.* 

* "  There  is  not  a  shadow  of  trust- 
worthy direct  evidence  that  abiogene- 
sis  [spontaneous  generation]  does  take 
place  or  has  taken  place  within  the 
period  during  which  the  existence  of 
life  on  the  globe  is  recorded."— HUX- 
LEY, under  "Biology,"  "Encyclopedia 
Britannica,"  vol.  iii.,  p.  689. 

"  I  do  not  forget  the  alleged  facts  of 
spontaneous  generation ;  but  even  after 
the  very  extended  investigations  of  the 
last  ten  years,  it  may  still  be  stated  as 
a  general  result  of  the  innumerable  ex- 
periments which  have  been  made,  that, 
in  no  case  has  even  the  lowest  type  of 
an  organic  cell  been  produced  from 
21 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

"To  the  scientist,"  says  Darwin, 
"it  is  a  hopeless  inquiry  as  to 
how  life  originated."  Life  from 
an  egg  is  still  the  latest  dictum 
of  science,  that  is,  life  only  from 
life.  When  all  was  ready  for  the 
plant,  the  life  came  from  above.* 
This  life  was  imparted  to  and  in- 
carnated in  the  prepared  matter, 
possessing  the  power  to  reorganize 
after  its  nature,  that  is,  after  the 
pattern  that  goes  with  each  type- 
life,  and  possessing  the  power  of 
multiplication,  so  that  the  earth 

unorganized  matter,  unless  through  the 
natural  processes  of  growth  from  a 
preexisting  germ."— COOKE,  " Religion 
and  Chemistry,"  ch.  vii.,  p.  222  (1897). 

"These  are  the  generations  ...  of 
every  plant  of  the  field  before  it  was  in 
the  earth  "  (Gen.  ii.  4.  5). 

*  "  Still  more  surely  can  we  refer  to  it 
[the  spiritual  world]  those  progressive 
manifestations  of  life  in  the  vegetable, 
the  animal,  and  man."  —  WALLACE, 
"Darwinism,"  p.  476. 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

was  covered  with  all  the  many 
varieties  of  plant  life,  varieties 
resulting  from  the  law  of  selec- 
tion through  difference  in  climate, 
through  food  distribution,  and 
through  other  causes,  and  from, 
the  law  of  heredity. 

SECOND  STEP  IN  LIFE, 
The  Animal  Kingdom. — No  plant, 
no  animal.  The  plant  was  neces- 
sary to  prepare  the  inorganic  world 
for  the  animal ;  the  plant  is  the 
essential  go-between.  The  animal 
can  not  digest  and  assimilate  the 
mineral,  but  the  plant  can,  and 
then  the  animal  can  digest  and 
assimilate  the  plant.  But  ages 
elapsed  in  the  preparation  of  the 
animal  protoplasm,  that  is,  in  fit- 
ting material  for  the  physical  basis 
of  the  animal  life.  Then  again, 
when  all  was  ready,  whence  came 
the  animal  life?  Scientists  now 
substantially  agree  that  there  is 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

not  a  scintilla  of  proof  that  an 
animal  life  has  ever  been  de- 
veloped from  a  plant.  The  phys- 
ical basis  of  animal  life  was 
ripened  through  the  plant  and 
mineral  world,  and  when  the  basis 
was  ready,  animal  life  came. 

This  life  also  came  from  above, 
it  did  not  come  from  below.  It 
came  with  the  new  birth  of  an 
animal  type-life  into  the  heredi- 
tary chain  of  evolution ;  and  the 
animal  type-life  was  imparted  to 
and  incarnated  in  the  prepared 
physical  basis,  bridging  in  itself 
the  chasm  between  the  two  king- 
doms. This  type-life  also  had  the 
power  to  reorganize  after  its  na- 
ture, and  from  it  all  animal  life 
was  developed.  In  some,  as  in 
the  lowest  protozoa,  it  was  arrested 
at  a  single  cell ;  in  others,  it  pro- 
gressed to  two,  three,  a  score, 
myriads  of  cells ;  in  some  it  pro- 
gressed in  lateral  ways,  ending 
24 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

in  birds,  elephants,  monkeys, 
wolves,  lions — in  one  preparing 
the  way  for  man. 

THIRD  STEP  IN  LIFE,  The 
Kingdom  of  the  Natural  Man. — 
Again,  ages  elapsed  in  the  prepa- 
ration of  the  human  protoplasm, 
that  is,  in  fitting  the  material  for 
the  physical  basis  of  the  natural 
man ;  and  when  all  was  ready,  the 
human  type-life  was  imparted  to 
and  incarnated  in  the  prepared 
matter,  being  born  from  above  into 
the  evolutionary  order  through  the 
hereditary  chain,  and  having  pow- 
er to  reorganize  after  his  nature.* 

*"That  it  [human  consciousness] 
can  not  possibly  be  the  product  of  any 
cunning  arrangement  of  material  par- 
ticles is  demonstrated  beyond  perad- 
venture  by  what  we  now  know  of  the 
correlation  of  physical  f orces. "— FISKE, 
"  The  Destiny  of  Man,"  p.  42. 

"Cerebral  psychology  tells  us  that  by 
no  possibility  can  thought  and  feeling 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

From  this  type-life  sprang  the 
races  of  mankind.  More  and 
more  with  each  succeeding  king- 
dom evolution  has  changed  its  di- 
rection upward  from  the  physical 

be  in  any  sense  the  products  of  matter. " 
— Idem,  p.  109. 

"It  would  be  immeasurably  inter- 
esting to  gaze  within  and  follow  the 
processes  of  such  a  cerebral  mechanism, 
as  we  observe  the  operations  of  a  cal- 
culating-machine. It  is  all  through 
and  forever  inconceivable  that  a  num- 
ber of  atoms  of  carbon,  hydrogen,  ni- 
trogen, oxygen,  and  so  on,  shall  be 
other  than  indifferent  as  to  how  they 
are  disposed  and  how  they  will  be 
moved.  It  is  utterly  inconceivable 
how  consciousness  shall  arise  from 
their  joint  action. "— DTTBOIS-REYMOND, 
"  Ueber  die  Grenzen  des  2faturerken- 
nens,"  p.  42. 

Huxley,  November,  1871,  Contempo- 
rary Review,  said:  "In  my  belief  con- 
sciousness and  molecular  action  are 
capable  of  being  expressed  by  one  an- 
other, j  ust  as  heat  and  molecular  action 
are  capable  of  being  expressed  in  terms 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

to  the  psychical,  protoplasm  giv- 
ing way  to  psychoplasm. 

FOUBTH  STEP  IN  LIFE, 
The  Kingdom  of  the  Spiritual 
Man. — Now  other  ages  elapsed. 
The  natural  man  evolved  a  higher 
and  higher  degree  of  perfection, 
evolution  finally  ceasing  along  the 
lines  of  the  coarser  physical  man, 
the  direction  becoming  wholly 
psychic,  immensely  developing 
that  portion  of  the  brain  which  is 
the  organ  of  the  psychic  powers.* 

of  one  another,"  but  he  accompanied 
this  statement  with  these  words:  "I 
really  know  nothing,  and  never  hope 
to  know  anything,  of  the  steps  by  which 
the  passage  from  molecular  movement 
to  states  of  consciousness  is  effected." 

*  Reasoning  upon  "the  dawning  of 
consciousness  "  in  his  "  Destiny  of  Man  " 
John  Fiske  points  out  that  the  psychic 
power  depends  upon  the  upper  and 
outer  portions  of  the  brain — "  the  cere- 
brum and  the  cerebellum. "  These  are 
27 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

In  the  fulness  of  time  there  was 
developed  in  him  what  may  be 
called,  for  the  sake  of  a  name, 
the  spiritual  protoplasm,  or  the 
psychoplasm,  *  the  exalted  physi- 
cal and  psychic  basis  of  the  inner 
man,  the  new  creature  of  the  king- 
dom of  the  spiritual  man.  When 
all  was  ready,  again  whence  came 

not  visible  in  the  lowest  forms  of  ani- 
mals, but  grow  large  as  the  scale  is 
ascended.  "  The  cerebral  surface  of  a 
human  infant  is  like  that  of  an  ape.  In 
an  adult  savage,  or  a  European  peas- 
ant, the  furrowing  is  somewhat  marked 
and  complicated.  In  the  brain  of  a 
great  scholar  the  furrows  are  very  deep 
and  crooked, "  and  numerous,  the  cere- 
bral surface,  "the  seat  of  conscious 
mental  life,  has  become  enormously 
enlarged  in  area. " 

*"The  psychoplasm  or  sentient 
material  forming  the  psychological  me- 
dium from  which  the  soul  derives  its 
structure  and  its  powers."  —  LEWES, 
"Problems  of  Life  and  Mind,"  vol.  i., 
p.  111. 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

this  new  life?  As  was  true  with 
the  other  kingdoms,  it  could  not 
come  from  below.  That  which  is 
born  of  flesh  is  flesh — that  which 
is  born  of  mineral  is  mineral; 
that  which  is  born  of  vegetable  is 
vegetable ;  that  which  is  born  of 
animal  is  animal;  that  which  is 
born  of  the  natural  man  is  natu- 
ral man ;  and  that  which  is  born 
of  the  spiritual  man  is  spiritual. 
Again,  the  life  came  from  above. 
It  came  with  the  new  birth  of  a 
spiritual  type-life  into  the  evolu- 
tionary order  through  the  heredi- 
tary chain  in  strict  accordance 
with  the  law  followed  in  the  pre- 
ceding kingdoms.  The  spiritual 
type-life  was  imparted  to  and  in- 
carnated in  the  prepared  psycho- 
plasm,  or  the  spiritual  protoplasm. 
In  this  combination  in  the  inner, 
the  spiritual  realm,  this  life  has 
the  power  to  reorganize  after  His 
nature,  after  the  pattern  that  goes 
29 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

with  each  type-life — has  within 
Himself  the  power  of  imparting 
spiritual  life,  that  is,  of  the  mul- 
tiplication of  corresponding  indi- 
vidualities. 

None  of  the  previous  transitions 
from  a  lower  to  a  higher  kingdom 
has  taken  place  within  historic 
times.  The  cradle  at  Bethlehem 
flashes  a  searchlight  down  the 
spiral  stairway  up  which  man  has 
come  from  platform  to  platform, 
kingdom  to  kingdom.  Here  we 
see  clearly  that  the  type-life  of 
the  kingdom  of  the  spiritual  man 
is  born  from  above  into  the  hered- 
itary chain  of  evolution.  Many 
times,  and  in  many  ways,  He  de- 
clares I  am  "  from  above. "  He  is 
born  a  natural  man,  and  yet  pos- 
sesses the  life  of  the  kingdom  next 
higher,  and  proceeds  to  lift  the 
natural  man  by  a  new  birth  into 
the  kingdom  of  the  spiritual  man. 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

He  is  born  the  son  of  man  and  the 
son  of  God,  bridging  the  chasm 
with  His  own  being. 

Again  and  again  He  says,  "I 
am  the  life "' ;  "I  have  come  that 
ye  may  have  life";  except  ye 
partake  of  Me  "ye  have  no  life 
in  you."  He  calls  Himself  the 
"bread  of  life,  "  "the  water  of 
life. "  This  would  all  be  meaning- 
less were  Christ  talking  about  the 
life  of  the  kingdom  of  the  natural 
man  which  all  now  have  and  have 
had. 

As  the  spiritual  type-life  lifts 
the  natural  man  into  the  spiritual 
kingdom,  so  the  type-life  of  the 
natural  man  lifted  the  animal  into 
the  kingdom  of  the  natural  man, 
and  the  animal  type-life  lifted  the 
vegetable,  and  the  vegetable  type- 
life  lifted  the  mineral. 

There  is  no  break  in  the  golden 
thread  that  runs  through  all  this 


NEXT  STEP  11?  EVOLUTION 

series  of  development  from  the 
mineral  world  up  to  the  new  crea- 
ture in  Christ  Jesus.  There  is 
nothing  in  this  last  development 
contrary  to  nature;  it  follows 
along  exactly  the  same  laws  of 
natural  unfoldment  as  did  the 
other  kingdoms.  The  law  of  con- 
tinuity holds.*  Christ  is  born 

*  Alfred  Russell  Wallace,  who  was 
joint  discoverer  with  Darwin  of  evolu- 
tion, and  is  its  greatest  living  expo- 
nent, in  his  book  "Darwinism,"  p.  474, 
shows  the  fallacy  as  to  new  causes  in- 
volving any  breach  of  continuity— these 
new  causes  embracing  vegetable  life, 
animal  life,  and  the  higher  powers  of 
man.  He  says,  pp.  475  and  476 : 

"These  faculties  [the  higher  powers 
of  the  natural  man]  could  not  possibly 
have  been  developed  by  means  of  the 
same  laws  which  have  determined  the 
progressive  development  of  the  organic 
world  in  general,  and  also  of  man's 
physical  organism.  .  .  .  Still  more 
surely  can  we  refer  to  it  [the  spiritual 
world]  those  progressive  manifestations 
of  life  in  the  vegetable,  the  animal,  and 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

really  into  the  kingdom  of  the  nat- 
ural man,  and  the  natural  man  is 
born  into  the  spiritual  kingdom, 
through  Christ,  the  type-life.  In 
this  last  stage  of  man's  ascent,  as 
in  the  previous  ones,  nature  makes 
"no  leap."  "Think  not,"  says 
Christ,  "  that  I  have  come  to  de- 
stroy the  law ;  I  have  not  come  to 
destroy,  but  to  fulfil."  He  came 
to  carry  on  His  work  in  harmony 
with  the  processes  of  the  universe. 
What  is  law  but  the  method  that 
the  immanent  God,  everywhere 
and  forever,  pursues  in  His  work? 

man."  Also,  in  "Natural  Selection," 
p.  185,  he  tells  us  that  the  advance  of 
man  is  due  not  to  the  survival  of  the 
fittest,  but  to  those  "  glorious  qualities 
which  raise  us  so  immeasurably  above 
our  fellow  animals  and  at  the  same 
time  afford  us  the  surest  proof  that 
there  are  other  and  higher  existences 
than  ourselves,  from  whom  these  qual- 
ities may  have  been  derived,  and  toward 
whom  we  may  be  ever  tending." 
3  33 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

True,  segments  of  the  circle  He 
follows  are  easily  out  of  the  reach 
of  our  vision.  Huxley  tells  us 
that  he  has  no  doubt  that  even  on 
the  physical  plane,  most  impor- 
tant work  is  being  done  far  beyond 
the  reach  of  the  most  powerful 
microscope.  He  might  have  said, 
and  kept  easily  within  bounds, 
the  important  work. 

The  crystal  is  matter  plus  the 
principle  of  crystallization;  so 
the  plant,  the  animal,  the  natural 
man — always  the  creature  of  the 
kingdom  below  with  the  plus  sign, 
for  a  birth  is  an  unfoldrnent  and 
something  more.  And  so,  the 
Christ  life  takes  the  character, 
the  soul,  the  spirit  of  the  natu- 
ral man,  which  have  developed 
through  the  ages — takes  them 
through  a  new  birth,  this  time 
with  man's  consent.  "Marvel 
not  that  I  say  unto  you,  ye  must 
be  born  again."  "Verily,  verily, 
34 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

I  say  unto  thee,  except  a  man  be 
born  from  above,  he  can  not  see 
the  kingdom  of  God "  (John  iii. 
3).  Ye  are  "babes  in  Christ," 
"Ye  are  new  creatures."  We 
become  heirs  "of  God  through 
Christ,"  crying  "Abba,  Father." 
"  In  love's  hour  Eternal  Love  con- 
ceives in  us  the  child  of  God" 
through  the  spiritual  type-life  of 
Christ  Jesus. 

Christ  could  not  have  been  more 
explicit  or  more  scientifically  ex- 
act in  declaring  Himself  the  type- 
life  of  the  spiritual  man.  "Iain 
the  door, "  "  the  way,"  "  the  life  " ; 
"no  man  can  come  to  the  Father 
but  by  me."  "He  that  hath  the 
Son  hath  life ;  and  he  that  hath 
not  the  Son  of  God  hath  not  life  " ; 
he  may  be  a  Caesar  leading  armies 
against  Pornpey,  or  a  Cicero  de- 
claiming his  matchless  oration 
against  Cataline,  and  yet  be  dead. 
35 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

In  the  inspired  picture-history 
of  creation,  an  Adam  is  the  type- 
life  of  the  kingdom  of  the  natural 
man;  in  the  New  Testament, 
Christ  is  presented  in  every  way 
as  the  type-life  of  the  kingdom 
of  the  spiritual  man.  "  The  first 
man  Adam  was  made  a  living  soul ; 
the  last  Adam  was  made  a  quick- 
ening spirit.  Howbeit  that  was 
not  first  which  is  spiritual,  but 
that  which  is  natural ;  and  after- 
ward that  which  is  spiritual "  (1 
Cor.  xv.  45,  46). 

Here,  also,  the  law  of  conform- 
ity to  type  is  manifest.  Each 
type-life  is  perfect,  but  those  who 
are  born  through  the  type-life 
begin  at  the  bottom ;  the  "  fall " 
is  great  from  the  type -life  to  the 
beginning  of  growth  in  the  next 
higher  kingdom.  But  from  that 
onward  the  battle  of  evolution  is 
to  secure  likeness  to  the  type. 
86 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

"  We  all,  with  open  face  beholding 
as  in  a  glass  the  glory  of  the  Lord, 
are  changed  into  the  same  image 
from  glory  to  glory"  (2  Cor.  iii. 
18).  We  shall  be  "conformed  to 
the  image  of  his  Son  "  (Rom.  viii. 
29) .  "  As  we  have  borne  the  image 
of  the  earthy,  we  shall  also  bear 
the  image  of  the  heavenly  "  (1  Cor. 
xv.  49).  After  the  night  is  over 
we  shall  awake  in  His  likeness. 

Newton  said  that  he  made  a 
splendid  guess  at  the  universal 
law  of  gravitation  when  he  saw 
the  apple  fall.  Why  may  it  not 
be  permissible  for  us  to  guess, 
from  the  law  of  conformity  to 
type,  that  in  every  kingdom  the 
new  creature  carries  with  it  the 
pattern  of  its  type-life,  and  that 
after  this  pattern,  in  the  lower 
kingdoms,  the  accompanying  cells 
strive  to  weave  a  nature  corre- 
sponding with  its  kingdom,  and 
in  the  kingdom  of  the  spiritual 
37 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

man  the  Holy  Spirit  strives  to 
weave  the  nature  of  the  spiritual 
man?* 

In  the  lower  kingdoms  it  is 
a  survival  of  the  fiyhtest,  in  the 
highest  a  survival  of  the  fittest, 
the  struggle  for  life  for  ourselves 
merging  into  a  stmggle  for  life  for 
others.  Even  among  men  in  the 
earlier  days,  to  discover  the  great- 
est man,  the  measuring-string  was 
placed  around  the  muscle.  That 
was  the  age  of  Hercules.  Then 
the  time  came  when  the  measur- 
ing-string was  placed  around  the 
head.  That  was  the  age  of  Bacon 

*  "  After  watching  the  process  hour 
by  hour  [in  the  semi-fluid  globule  of 
protoplasm  of  the  embryo]  one  is  almost 
involuntarily  possessed  by  the  notion 
that  some  more  subtle  aid  to  vision  than 
an  achromatic  would  show  the  hidden 
artist,  with  his  plan  before  him,  stri- 
ving with  skilful  manipulation  to  per- 
fect work. "— HUXLEY,  "  Lay  Sernums," 
p.  261. 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

and  Shakespeare.  But  the  time 
coraes  in  the  rapidly  advancing 
future  when  the  measuring-string 
will  be  placed  around  the  heart, 
and  he  who  measures  most  there 
will  be  most  conformed  to  the  Mas- 
ter, for  he  is  greatest  who  most 
fully  gives  himself  for  others. 

Evolution  goes  on,  hereafter,  in 
the  inner  and  upper  world,  out- 
side and  beyond  our  vision,  ma- 
king many  and  many  variations 
doubtless,  as  in  the  lower  realms. 
In  the  Father's  spiritual  house 
also  are  many  mansions.  We  are 
stepping  from  the  physiological 
to  the  psychological,  from  body 
and  mind  to  spirit.  As  in  all  pre- 
vious growth,  the  latest  type-life 
is  reappearing  in  His  generation 
— in  the  "  new  creatures  "  of  His 
kingdom. 

To-day,  in  the  unfolding  em- 
bryo of  every  child,  nature  mar- 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

velously  and  clearly  retells  the 
history  of  the  evolution  of  the 
physical  nature  of  the  human  race 
from  the  one-celled  moneron  to 
the  billion-celled  man.  For  the 
embryo  of  the  child  is  a  historic 
map,  done  in  flesh  and  blood,  of 
the  evolution  of  man,  of  the  forms 
he  has  assumed,  broadly  speaking, 
as  he  climbed  nature's  stairway.* 
But  more  than  man's  physical 
nature  was  evolved. 

*  Romanes,  in  "Darwin  and  After 
Darwin,"  chap,  iv.,  says  that  the  em- 
bryo is  a  resume  or  recapitulation  of 
the  successive  phases  through  which 
the  being  has  been  developed  with  ex- 
planable  omissions.  On  p.  102  he  tells 
of  the  young  salamander  that  is  so 
complete  in  its  gills  shortly  before  birth 
that  if  it  is  removed  from  the  womb 
and  placed  in  water  it  will  be  able  to 
live,  breathing  like  a  fish  through  its 
gills. 


40 


II 

The  physical  nature  of  man  has 
perdured  through  heredity,  com- 
ing up  through  the  vegetable 
kingdom,  the  animal  kingdom, 
and  the  kingdom  of  the  natural 
man,  no  break  in  the  chain  from 
the  unicellular  monera  and  ameba 
— the  protozoa.  The  oak  grows 
from  the  acorn  that  has  in  it  a 
cell  which  has  in  it  the  vitality 
and  pattern  of  the  parent  tree. 
That  cell  divides  and  subdivides 
into  the  millions  of  cells  that 
weave  the  new  oak,  but  there  is 
not  one  cell  of  the  millions  that 
did  not  come  from  the  single  cell 
given  to  the  acorn  by  the  parent 
oak;  so  back  through  the  chain, 
along  which  that  oak  has  come, 
41 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

through  the  myriads  of  centuries 
from  the  plant  type -life;  not  one 
of  these  cells  in  all  the  ages  out 
of  line,  not  a  break  in  the  chain,  no 
chasm,  no  leap.  Every  twig, 
every  leaf  in  the  wide-spreading 
oak,  has  its  thread  unbroken 
through  the  ages  back  to  the  prim- 
ordial cell — back  to  the  original 
that  came  from  above. 

But  the  outward  evolution — 
that  of  the  physical — marvelous 
beyond  thought,  is  comparatively 
insignificant.  The  chief  evolution 
has  been  and  is  within.  The 
scientist  is  unscientific  who  ignores 
the  greater  evolution  and  builds  his 
explanatory  system  wholly  on  the 
lesser — on  the  least.  Psychology 
is  also  a  science.  Has  nature  one 
method  for  the  development  of  the 
physical  part  of  man's  being,  and 
another  for  the  development  of 
the  non-material  and  spiritual? 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

Nature  is  not  divided.  What 
means  the  hereditary  likeness, 
mental  and  spiritual — not  less 
marked  than  the  physical?  These 
marks  often  skip  many  generations 
and  then  reappear  again  in  full. 
They  can  not,  therefore,  be  the 
result  of  education  or  imitation. 
Nor  is  it  easy  to  believe  that  they 
were  placed  within  us  by  a  direct 
act  of  creation,  as  the  old-fash- 
ioned theological  professor  taught 
that  God  mixed  the  fossils  with 
the  plastic  stones  at  creation, 
somewhat  as  a  cook  mixes  raisins 
and  other  fruits  in  the  dough  for 
her  plum-pudding. 

What  means  the  gradual  devel- 
opment in  the  brain  of  the  cere- 
brum and  cereballum,  the  organs 
of  the  soul  powers,  enlarging  from 
generation  to  generation?  These 
are  scarcely  visible  in  the  lowest 
animals.  They  become  larger  as 
we  advance  up  the  animal  scale 
43 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

of  intelligence,  or  psychic  power ; 
large  in  the  ape,  who  came  far 
along  the  same  line  that  man 
came ;  four  times  as  large  in  the 
lowest  Zulu  as  in  the  ape,  but  far 
larger  in  the  European  and  Amer- 
ican civilized  man — thus  slow- 
ly made  perfect  through  awful 
struggles  and  sufferings,  painfully 
growing  a  million  years  or  more. 
Is  it  not  then  reasonable  to  believe 
that  there  is  a  corresponding 
psychic  or  soul  development  from 
generation  to  generation  in  the 
unseen  individuality,  the  ego, 
which  uses  the  cerebrum  and  cer- 
ebellum as  organs;  that  up  the 
spiral  stairway  of  evolution  the 
whole  man  has  come — his  person- 
ality, with  its  soul  powers,  and 
the  physical  organs  of  these  pow- 
ers in  the  brain,  and  the  entire 
physical  man? 

Is  it  hard  to  believe  that  our 
44 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

individuality  has  been  born  and 
reborn  through  the  line  of  ances- 
try back  to  the  type-lives,  and 
through  them  back  to  the  "  begin- 
ning," when  God  took  of  His  own 
life  to  develop,  through  ages  of 
conflict,  personalities  other  than 
His  own  who  would,  of  their  own 
free-will,  choose  goodness?  Is  it 
hard  to  believe  that  at  every  suc- 
cessive birth  each  parent  has 
placed  his  stamp  upon  the  indi- 
viduality, but  that  the  individual- 
ity has  perdured  being  reborn 
again  and  again  into  successive 
higher  kingdoms?  Does  it  seem 
hard  to  believe  that  we  should  be 
born  many  times?  Is  it  then 
harder  to  believe  that  we  should 
be  born  after  we  have  lived  than 
that  we  should  be  born  when  we 
have  not  lived?  The  profoundest 
mystery  is  in  the  first  birth,  in 
which  we  all  believe.  And  why 
should  it  be  thought  by  us  incred- 
45 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

ible  that,  with  the  mingling  of  the 
parental  cells,  the  individuality 
exactly  fitted  should  be  reborn  in 
the  line  of  heredity,  receiving  the 
parental  stamp,  being  attracted  by 
the  law  which  answers  to  that  law 
which  guides  the  atom  unerringly 
to  its  place  in  the  crystal — that 
same  law  wonderfully  exalted? 
Whatever  and  wherever  character 
is,  it  must  be  obedient  to  the  law 
that  draws  it,  for  the  law  of  at- 
traction is  even  more  irresistible 
in  the  inner  world  than  is  the  law 
of  gravitation  in  the  outer  world. 
Every  man  as  he  comes  to  his 
birth  comes  to  his  own  place ;  in 
a  profound  sense  he  chooses  his 
parents  and  his  surroundings. 
As  he  was,  he  is,  plus  his  birth- 
gain  and  his  growth  through  con- 
sent and  volition;  his  past  leads 
him. 

And  in  this  last  transition  each 
man  is  conscious  that  his  individ- 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

uality  continues,  altho  he  passes 
from  one  kingdom  into  the  next. 
The  dictum  of  science  is  "no 
leap,  no  break "  — •  continuity. 
Then  it  is  reasonable  to  believe 
that  the  individuality  will  con- 
tinue through  succeeding  future 
changes,  as  it  has  continued  these 
millions  of  years  through  the  suc- 
cessive past  changes.  It  would 
require  much  credulity  to  believe 
that  nature  has  travailed  in  pain 
these  untold  ages  to  develop  a 
personality  that  would  of  its  own 
free-will  choose  goodness,  only  to 
destroy  that  personality  as  soon 
as  made.  John  Fiske  has  well 
said :  *  "  The  materialistic  as- 
sumption that  .  .  .  the  life  of  the 
soul  .  .  .  ends  with  the  life  of 
the  body,  is  perhaps  the  most 
colossal  instance  of  assumption 
that  is  known  in  the  history  of 
philosophy." 

*  "  The  Destiny  of  Man,"  p.  110. 

47 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

That  was  a  provincial  notion 
about  the  universe  which  was  held 
before  Copernicus' s  time — the  be- 
lief that  the  sun,  planets,  stars, 
all  revolved  around  the  earth. 
Copernicus  was  called  the  de- 
stroyer of  faith  and  bitterly  de- 
nounced. His  idea  made  the  earth 
but  a  speck,  and  the  Milky  Way 
— billions  of  miles  long — the  mere 
yard-stick  of  the  universe.  All 
this  has  immensely  enlarged  faith 
— did  not  destroy  it.  Darwin, 
too,  was  called  the  destroyer  of 
faith;  but  now  we  begin  to  see 
that  evolution,  in  giving  man 
countless  eons  of  growth,  instead 
of  keeping  him  a  creature  of  yes- 
terday, bounded  by  the  cradle  and 
grave,  has  immensely  enlarged 
faith,  and  beyond  thought  has 
added  to  the  dignity  of  man. 

The   new  birth  of  the  natural 
man  into  the  kingdom  of  the  spiri- 
48 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

tual  man,  the  reborning  of  his 
personality,  making  him  a  child 
of  God  after  the  type  of  Christ, 
is  the  tap-root  of  Christianity,  is 
the  chief  artery.  Cut  that  and 
all  is  gone.  Keep  that  and  let 
the  "  new  creature  "  grow  toward 
his  fulness,  then  Christ  is  recre- 
ated, reincarnated  in  him,  and 
through  him  He  is  manifest  again 
among  men. 


49 


Ill 

At  each  succeeding  birth  the 
individuality,  to  thrive,  must  be 
in  harmony  with  its  changed  sur- 
roundings, and  the  cells  that 
swarm  in  every  living  body  strug- 
gle to  bring  this  to  pass.  It  is  the 
business  of  the  cell  to  obey  the 
pushings  of  the  governing  force 
in  the  organization  to  which  it  be- 
longs. The  plant  needs  water, 
minerals,  air,  sunshine.  Its  at- 
tendant cells  hear  the  cry  of  their 
master  and  build  roots  into  the 
ground  and  branches  into  the  air, 
and  weave  leaves  into  lungs  and 
laboratories.  Note  a  vine  in  some 
cave  —  how  it  works  its  Avay 
toward  the  hole  through  which 
sunshine  is  streaming,  and  how  it 
50 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

causes  some  roots  to  build  out 
toward  a  vein  of  water;  others 
toward  a  skeleton  many  feet  away 
and  along  the  bones  of  that  skele- 
ton— hungering  and  thirsting  for 
minerals,  water,  light,  heat. 
Hungering  and  thirsting — asking, 
knocking  —  the  plant  receives. 
Seek  and  ye  shall  find ;  strive  and 
it  shall  be  yours.  This  is  the 
law  in  the  plant  life,  the  law  in 
the  animal  life,  in  the  life  of  the 
natural  man,  in  the  life  of  the 
spiritual  man. 

After  ages  of  need  in  the  ani- 
mal kingdom  and  tireless  struggle, 
guided  by  an  intelligence  im- 
planted in  the  cells,  at  last  the 
eye  was  built,  so  the  ear,  and  so 
the  other  senses,  that  the  animal 
might  have  its  desires  and  feed 
on  the  surrounding  waves  of  light, 
waves  of  sound,  and  have  the 
advantage  of  odor,  of  taste,  and 
touch.  Thus :  the  personality  had 
51 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

the  inner  capacity  to  enjoy  sound, 
and  to  take  advantage  of  this 
in  the  struggle  for  existence. 
There  was  an  outer  world  of 
sound,  but  there  was  no  connect- 
ing instrumentality.  The  inner 
life  blindly  yearned  for  harmony 
with  its  surroundings ;  the  cells 
hearkened  and  built  the  ear.  It 
took  ages,  but  in  an  eternity  and 
a  boundless  universe  to  work  in 
what  are  a  million  years  or  ten 
million  years  more  or  less? 

Seek  is  the  law  of  growth.  Its 
suggestion  we  see  in  the  plant 
working  its  way  toward  the  sun- 
shine. This  law  comes  to  perfec- 
tion in  the  prayer  of  the  spirit. 
I  desire,  therefore  I  pray,  there- 
fore I  have.  In  a  deep  sense,  as 
a  man  thinketh  so  he  is.  The 
universe  of  cells  within  each 
man  calls  him  master.  Ye  are 
gods;  kings  upon  thrones;  your 
slightest  wish  is  heard,  your  eai- 
52 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

nest  persistent  desire  compels 
obedience.  Answer  to  prayer  is 
a  growth,  a  building  up  or  down 
to  what  you  wish.  Wishing  is 
asking.  Ask  what  you  will  and 
from  that  instance  receiving  you 
receive.  Here  is  the  Christian 
doctrine  of  answer  to  prayer ;  here 
is  Christian  science ;  here  also  are 
psychological  control,  mind-heal- 
ing, mesmerism. 

Do  I  ask,  longingly,  Why  was 
God  more  near  to  Abraham  and 
Moses  than  to  me?  If  Enoch 
walked  with  God  why  not  I?  He 
who  so  questions  has  already  his 
hand  upon  the  latch  of  the  door 
of  the  new  kingdom. 

Translate  John  xiv.  into  the 
language  of  evolution:  Let  not 
your  spirit  have  unrest.  In  the 
inner  kingdom  are  many  stages 
and  forms  of  growth.  If  it  were 
not  so  I  would  have  told  you.  I 
go  within,  away  from  your  outer 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

sense  of  sight,  of  hearing,  that  ye 
may  more  truly  yearn,  seek  after, 
that  which  is  spiritual,  and  thus 
by  exercise  of  your  spiritual  pow- 
ers grow  inward  and  upward  to 
God's  plane  and  know  God;  then 
my  Father  and  I  will  be  able  to 
abide  in  you,  and  I  can  more  truly 
manifest  myself  to  you,  and  then 
ye  shall  know  that  I  am  in  my 
Father,  ye  in  Me,  and  I  in  you. 
Now  you  see  Me  on  your  plane 
of  knowing;  then  you  will  see 
Me  on  my  plane  of  knowing ;  now 
you  see  through  a  glass  darkly, 
then  you  will  see  and  know  as  you 
are  seen  and  known ;  that  is,  you 
will  be  a  creature  of  the  spiritual 
kingdom,  and  will  be  equipped 
with  its  powers  of  knowing. 

Christ  can  never  fully  come  into 
a  man  until  the  man  has  grown 
up  to  the  level  of  spiritual  things. 
It  is  a  sensuous  generation  that 
seeks  to  be  satisfied  with  con- 
54 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

solation     through     the    physical 
senses. 

All  of  our  faculties  carry  their 
own  demonstrations  of  truth  up 
to  the  level  of  their  development. 
To  the  pure  and  loving,  purity 
and  love  need  no  witnesses.  Every 
man  has  had  placed  in  his  hand  a 
latch-key  to  the  beauty  and  wis- 
dom— to  all  of  the  excellences  of 
the  universe;  but  there  is  only 
one  way  of  using  that  latch-key 
effectively.  We  must  grow  to  a 
level  with  the  latch.  I  must  have 
an  eye  fitted  for  the  landscape, 
and  must  have  a  poetic  soul  be- 
fore the  landscape  can  read  its 
poetry  to  me.  I  may  believe  that 
Beethoven's  Ninth  Symphony  is 
music  because  a  master  of  music 
has  told  me  so;  that  is  belief 
based  on  authority;  or,  I  may 
measure  the  waves  of  sound  and 
scientifically  demonstrate  that  it 
55 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

is  music :  But  such  evidences  are 
beggarly,  and  praise  based  on 
them  would  drive  a  composer 
mad.  But  let  me  hunger  and 
thirst  after  music ;  seek,  pray  for 
musical  sight  and  soul  until  I 
develop  up  to  the  level  of  Bee- 
thoven's Symphony;  then  as 
quickly  as  I  hear  it  I  exclaim: 
"  That  is  mu?ic !  "  Do  you  ask : 
"Who  told  you?"  I  answer: 
"No  one;  I  know  it  I"  My  latch- 
key enters,  for  I  am  on  a  level 
with  the  latch.  I  asked,  I  sought, 
I  knocked,  until  I  grew  up  into 
the  musical  world.  I  must  grow 
up  to  God  before  I  can  know  Him ; 
I  must  grow  up  to  Christ  before  I 
can  see  Him.  The  pure  in  heart 
shall  see  and  hear  spiritual  things. 
I  must  be  on  God's  level  before 
even  the  lowly  flower  can  tell  me 
the  thought  that  was  in  His  mind 
when  He  created  it. 

If  any  man  will  do  His  will  he 
66 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

shall  grow  the  character  that  will 
enable  him  to  know  of  the  doc- 
trine whether  it  be  of  God  or  of 
man;  truth  is  self-demonstrable 
up  to  its  level. 

Seek  is  the  law  of  growth  in  all 
kingdoms;  and  it  is  the  law  of 
development  and  of  the  adjust- 
ment of  the  feeders  through  which 
each  kingdom  asserts  itself  to  its 
creatures  and  gives  them  their 
food  and  consolation.  Who  has 
not  smiled  many  times  at  the 
serio-hurnorous  reflection  of  Rob- 
ert Louis  Stevenson  on  hearing 
of  the  death  of  Matthew  Arnold : 
"  So,  Arnold  is  dead !  I  am  sorry ; 
he  won't  like  God."  There  is  a 
profoundly  solemn  truth  under 
this  witticism. 

There  is  health  for  the  plant  in 

sun-rays ;    the  plant  in  the  cave 

had  need  of  light,  and  its  cells 

heard  the  cry  and  built  toward 

57 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

the  light.  That  capacity  for  light 
and  that  groping  of  the  cells 
proved  the  existence  of  the  sun. 
The  conscious  feeling  after  God 
among  people  everywhere  proves 
the  existence  of  God  and  of  the 
spiritual  world. 

The  new-born  child  must  adjust 
its  lungs  to  the  atmosphere  into 
which  it  comes  or  it  must  die. 
It  hereafter  must  eat  and  drink 
with  its  mouth,  breathe  with  its 
lungs ;  it  must  have  new  feeders. 
The  bird,  as  it  chips  its  way  out 
of  the  egg,  adjusts  itself  to  its 
new  surroundings.  It  is  a  hard 
trial  often  for  a  child  to  be  weaned, 
yet  it  is  love  that  does  it.  It  is 
done  to  give  it  more  abundant  life, 
not  less. 

The  spiritual  man  has  meat  and 
drink  that  the  world  knows  not 
of.  He  is  willing  to  lose  his  life, 
and  thereby  saves  it.  He  is  care- 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOL  UTION 

f ul  for  nothing,  and  thereby  has 
all  things.  The  meek  inherit  even 
the  earth.  It  becomes  safe  for 
a  man  to  have  riches  only  when 
he  can  easily  do  without  them 
When  the  feeders  of  our  soul  are 
fastened  upon  God,  it  becomes  a 
small  thing  for  us  to  be  judged  of 
man — really  fearing  praise  more 
than  blame.  To  such  a  one  re- 
venge, malice,  passion,  appetite, 
grow  empty.  Christ  spoke  a  sim- 
ple truth,  not  a  paradox,  when  He 
said :  "  They  shall  lay  their  hands 
upon  you  and  persecute  you,  and 
ye  shall  be  betrayed  both  by 
parents  and  brethren  and  kins- 
folks and  friends;  and  some  of 
you  they  will  cause  to  be  put  to 
death,  and  ye  shall  be  hated  of 
all  men  for  my  name's  sake,  but 
not  a  hair  of  your  head  shall  per- 
ish." He  who  has  been  born  into 
the  kingdom  of  the  spiritual  man 
knows  that  all  these  things  can 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

not  harm  one  iota  of  that  new  na- 
ture which  is  to  be  henceforth  for- 
ever the  whole  of  himself.  He 
leaves  all  for  all.  He  conquers 
desire  by  the  deepest  possible 
desire.  He  has  learned  the  art 
of  communing  with,  correspond- 
ing with,  feeding  upon,  the  inner 
world.  He  walks  and  talks  with 
God.  In  all  this  is  the  truest 
philosophy  —  we  overcome  the 
lower  by  finding  that  we  do  not 
need  it.  We  conquer  by  repla- 
cing ;  we  are  weaned  from  depend- 
ence upon  the  kingdom  of  the  nat- 
ural man  by  finding  far  more 
satisfying  meat  and  drink  than 
what  we  knew  of  before. 

This  is  the  meaning  of  self- 
denial,  fasting,  repentance,  suffer- 
ing— the  weaning  of  the  feeders 
from  the  old  to  the  new  environ- 
ment—the feeders  that  give  food 
and  consolation.  We  enter  into 
the  kingdom  of  the  spiritual  man 
60 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

as  the  babe  enters  into  the  king- 
dom of  the  natural  man.  Every 
new  creature  grows  up  from  the 
grave  of  the  old.  Up  the  stairs 
of  holy  patience  we  climb  the 
heights  of  the  inner  kingdom. 
Our  will  henceforth  is  to  yield 
our  will,  but  the  sensuous  man 
contests  every  inch  with  the  spiri- 
tual. The  perishing  of  the  old 
man  day  by  day  is  painful,  and  so 
is  the  renewal  of  the  inner,  for 
birth  also  is  painful.  We  learn 
to  love  love,  hate  hate,  and  fear 
only  fear ;  but  every  move  upward 
has  in  it  birth-pangs.  We  are 
in  the  soul's  gymnasium — on  its 
battle-field.  The  creature  was 
made  subject  to  vanity  for  a 
cause.  *  Says  Ruskin :  "  I  do  not 

*  "  It  is  an  inevitable  deduction  from 
the  hypothesis  of  evolution  that  races 
of  sentient  creatures  could  have  come 
into  existence  under  no  other  condi- 
tions [than  those  of  pains  and  pleas- 
61 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

wonder  often  at  what  men  suffer, 
but  I  wonder  at  what  they  lose." 

I  wonder  rather  that  they  hesi- 
tate to  suffer  when  I  think  of 
what  is  to  be  gained.  Corrective 
experiences  are  repellant  medi- 
cines, not  always  in  capsules  of 
honey,  but  they  are  medicines. 

On  the  plane  of  this  lower  life 
we  can  not  explain  suffering.  On 
the  plane  of  the  egg  life  we  can 
not  explain  the  breaking  of  the 
egg.  For  the  explanation  we 
must  look  up  to  the  singing-bird 
in  the  branches.  Paul  speaks  in 
the  language  of  evolution  when 
he  tells  of  the  law  of  the  spiritual 
man  fighting  against  the  law  of 
the  members;  the  fighting  and 
the  suffering  are  essential  for 
growth.  I  have  made  great  gain 
when  I  have  learned  what  Christ 
meant  when  He  said,  "Seek  ye 

ures]." — HERBERT  SPENCER,  "  Princi- 
ples  of  Psychology,"  section  124. 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

first  the  kingdom  of  God,  and 
his  righteousness,  and  all  these 
things  [temporal  consolation]  will 
be  added  unto  you,"  that  is,  when 
you  conquer  the  lower  things  by 
the  higher,  then,  and  only  then, 
the  lower  yields  the  helpfulness 
that  is  in  Christ. 

It  is  a  marvelous  way,  marvel- 
ous beyond  imagination,  in  which 
the  new  creature  of  the  next 
higher  kingdom  is  developed,  a 
spiritual  man  is  created,  a  being  is 
made  after  the  type  of  Christ  and 
in  whom  Christ  manifests  Him- 
self. 

It  doth  not  yet  appear  what  we 
shall  be,  but  when  He  appears  we 
shall  be  like  Him,  and  He  can 
never  so  appear  to  us  until  we  are 
like  Him.  This  is  the  end  toward 
which  all  evolution  on  the  earth 
has  tended.  Nature  has  taken 
millions  of  years  and  endless 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

struggles  to  produce  the  new 
spiritual  man.  All  things  have 
moved  together  for  the  develop- 
ment of  his  personality,  his  psy- 
chic nature,  and  his  body,  the 
body  to  be,  as  well  as  the  body 
that  is.  The  end  is  the  person- 
ality reborn  through  the  Holy 
Spirit  into  the  Christ  type,  and 
with  the  Christ  nature — on  whom 
the  henceforth  intimate  God 
presses  on  all  sides,  within  and 
without,  as  an  atmosphere  in 
whom  he  consciously  lives,  moves, 
and  has  his  being.  God  hence- 
forth becomes  his  conscious  envi- 
ronment from  whom  he  receives 
all  nourishment  and  consolation. 

To  be  a  Christian  is  not  to  get 
somewhere,  but  to  be  something, 
to  be  recreated  in  the  image  of 
the  Father,  the  living  God,  after 
the  pattern  Christ  Jesus. 

The  value  of  this  creation  can 
be  measured  only  by  the  ages  of 
64 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

conflict  that  it  has  taken  to  pro- 
duce such  a  free  individuality. 

We  see  all  around  us  those 
in  whom  is  being  wrought  out 
through  the  divine  spirit  of  Christ 
a  spiritual  nature;  a  true  son 
of  God,  of  immortality.  How 
strange  it  is  to  look  into  a  human 
face,  and  to  look  into  human  eyes, 
and  to  think  that  a  son  of  the  liv- 
ing God  is  veiled  there — to  think 
of  the  greatness  of  that  creature, 
for  the  accomplishment  of  which 
all  creation  on  earth  has  been  in 
travail  for  these  untold  ages ! 

Often  not  anything  extraor- 
dinary impresses  us,  as  we  look 
upon  a  comrade  in  whom  this 
Christ  nature  has  begun ;  but  wait : 
we  now  see  this  kingdom  of  the 
soul  only  in  its  germ.  The  bulb 
of  the  tiger  lily  is  not  over  pretty, 
but  to  the  eyes  that  see  the  possi- 
bilities of  the  tiger  lily,  that  bulb 
is  a  poem.  The  step  from  the 
5  65 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

highest  morality  of  the  natural 
man  to  the  lowest  round  in  the 
kingdom  of  the  spiritual  man  is  a 
stupendous  one.  John  the  Bap- 
tist was  the  greatest  of  those  born 
of  women — greatest  of  those  in 
the  kingdom  of  the  natural  man — 
but  the  least  in  the  new  kingdom 
of  the  spiritual  man  is  greater  than 
he. 

God  broods  over  every  soul, 
waiting,  ever  waiting,  for  desire, 
for  invitation.  Seeking  begins 
and  continues  growth  in  the  inner 
kingdom.  It  is  the  first  and  last 
round  in  the  ladder  that  Jacob 
saw,  and  all  the  intervening 
rounds.  As  a  man  seeketh,  so  he 
becometh.  The  one  thing  needful 
is  not  the  power  of  logic,  or  the 
courage  to  step  out  on  the  conclu- 
sions of  syllogisms;  it  is  right 
dispositions,  intention,  choice. 
The  willingness  to  heed  the  inner 
66 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

voice  opens  the  door  to  Christ  the 
type-life,  to  the  new  birth  of  the 
personality,  and  to  the  beginning 
of  the  accompanying  new  nature 
by  which  each  personality  grows 
into  correspondence  with  its  new 
surroundings. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  have 
heard  with  the  outer  ear  the  words 
of  God  or  the  name  of  Christ. 
All  that  is  necessary  is  within 
the  reach  of  any  man  in  any  age 
or  clime,  within  the  reach  of  an 
Abraham  or  Buddha,  or  Confu- 
cius, of  a  Paul,  or  Maimonides,  or 
Savanorola,  or  Luther,  before  or 
after  Christ  was  in  the  flesh. 
Come  whosoever  will.  God  lis- 
tens to  prayer  with  His  ear  on  the 
man's  inner  heart,  not  at  his  lips, 
and  an  answer  to  prayer  is  the 
growth  of  the  inner  nature  into 
the  fitness  to  receive  the  request. 
The  heat  and  light  which  the  plant 
absorbs  measure  its  capacity,  not 
67 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

the  ability  of  the  sun.  Every 
soul  gets  what  it  is  fitted  to  re- 
ceive. He  that  willeth  to  do  the 
will  of  God  develops  the  nature 
that  is  the  touchstone  and  the 
absorbent  of  spiritual  truth.  By 
the  law  of  our  being  we  grow  a 
fitness  for  that  which  we  desire — 
an  earnest  desire  is  bound  to  re- 
veal itself  in  action.  "He  that 
keepeth  my  words,  and  doeth  my 
will,  he  it  is  that  loveth  me." 
We  grow  by  seeking;  we  confess 
by  doing,  for  deeds  are  the  inter- 
preters of  the  inner  growth. 

What  we  love  fastens  itself  to 
our  spirits ;  we  are  in  bondage  to 
that  we  love.  We  set  our  affec- 
tions on  God,  but  He  is  perfect 
wisdom,  and  perfect  right,  and 
perfect  love,  hence  this  bondage 
is  the  perfection  of  liberty ;  it  is 
the  bondage  of  pure  intellect,  of 
pure  heart,  love.  This  is  a  per- 
fect servitude  that  leads  to  full 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

freedom.  Here  is  the  turning- 
point,  the  crux — willingness  to 
transfer  the  feeders  of  our  nature 
from  the  lower  kingdom  to  the 
higher.  Hence  Christ's  constant 
insistence,  Except  ye  hate  (cease 
depending  upon)  the  world,  food, 
clothing,  the  loves  of  the  kingdom 
of  the  natural  man,  ye  can  not 
enter  into  the  kingdom  of  the 
spiritual  man,  can  not  live  in  this 
kingdom.  It  is  a  change  of  cen- 
ter from  self  to  God,  from  the 
world  of  sense  to  the  world  of 
spirit. 

Do  not  say  that  you  can  not  be 
born  again.  You  can  and  must. 
It  is  natural  to  step  into  this  king- 
dom, as  natural  as  growth  is. 
The  natural  response  of  the  heart 
is  Christian,  says  Tertullian.  Our 
experience  supports  and  justifies 
this  necessity. 

Choice      persisted     in    means 


NEXT  STEP  IX  EVOLUTION 

growth  of  the  spiritual  nature — 
character — and  this  is  that  crys- 
tallization of  faith  that  removes 
mountains.  This  inner  life  is 
a  growth,  slow  growth,  but  a 
growth,  and  with  the  growth  is 
a  corresponding  development  of 
brain  substances,  and  which  in  its 
turn  measures  its  growth. 

As  the  hart,  the  pursued  hart, 
panteth  for  the  water-brook,  so 
yearneth,  hungereth,  thirsteth 
after  God  the  soul  that  is  born 
and  grows  into  the  new  kingdom. 
Holy  desire  ever  leads  the  way. 
Seeking  is  exercise,  and  exercise 
is  always  the  law  of  growth  in  the 
inner  as  in  the  outer  world. 

But  man  must  be  good  because 
it  is  good  to  be  good,  not  because 
he  escapes  from  wrath,  or  receives 
some  benefit.  The  kingdom  of 
heaven  is  goodness,  and  all  good- 
ness leads  that  way.  Christ  is 
70 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

the  way  because  He  is  good. 
There  must  be  another  conceptiou 
of  God  than  that  against  which 
the  Buddhists  warn  us,  that  He  is 
a  "cow  to  be  milked." 

The  great  original  sculptors  of 
Greece  whom  all  the  world  now 
studies,  as  Emerson  would  say, 
stayed  at  home  to  study,  and  did 
not  bother  much  with  going  to 
Egypt  or  Mesopotamia.  God  is 
a  re  warder  of  those  that  diligently 
seek  Him,  not  by  imitation,  not 
outwardly,  not  with  the  noise  of 
words  that  men  may  hear,  but  in 
the  closet,  in  the  silence  of  the 
inner  chamber  of  the  soul.  Every 
man  must  find  himself,  and  be 
himself. 

There  is  no  kingdom  of  heaven 
where  there  is  no  kingly  soul.  In 
a  sense  color  comes  with  the  eye- 
sight. Until  the  ear  is  created, 
where  is  the  world  of  sound? 
71 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

Who  by  searching  could  find  it? 
It  exists  only  to  those  who  have 
the  corresponding  faculty.  If 
there  is  a  God,  why  does  He  not 
show  Himself,  and  why  does  He 
not  make  the  spiritual  world  man- 
ifest as  He  does  this  world?  This 
He  does  do  exactly,  but  each  after 
its  own  order.  Where  there  is  a 
corresponding  sense  there  is  vis- 
ion, hearing,  or  touch;  the  other 
senses  are  each  but  the  shadow 
of  the  corresponding  inner  sense. 
The  law  of  the  one  suggests  the 
law  of  the  other. 

God  hid  Himself  behind  the 
world  of  our  physical  senses  that 
we,  free  of  all  compulsion,  might 
develop  the  spiritual  man;  when 
that  is  developed  He  can  safely 
reveal  His  infinite  power  and  wis- 
dom and  goodness.  Who  could 
make  free  choice  in  the  conscious 
presence  of  an  infinite  one? 
72 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

Nor  is  this  nature  transferable, 
or  to  be  extemporized.  If  no  oil 
is  in  my  lamp  when  the  moment 
of  the  trial  judgment  comes,  I  am 
helpless.  Will  or  wish  at  the  mo- 
ment is  not  sufficient.  If  there 
is  no  development  of  the  inner 
nature  I  am  not  a  child  of  the 
inner  kingdom,  and  can  not  be 
recognized  by  the  Master.  He 
can  never  manifest  Himself  to 
me.  Many  will  say  in  that  day: 
"  Lord,  Lord,  have  we  not  proph- 
esied in  thy  name?  And  in  thy 
name  have  cast  out  devils,  and  in 
thy  name  have  done  many  won- 
derful works?  "  but  who  will  not 
have  the  spiritual  nature  which 
alone  is  the  recognizable  visible 
substance  in  the  inner  world. 

It  is  choice  that  exalts  in  the 
spiritual  kingdom,  not  birth .  Out 
of  stones  God  can  make  children 
of  Abraham — on  the  physical 
side;  but  even  omnipotence  and 
73 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

omniscience  are  not  able  against 
free  choice  to  make  one  in  deed  and 
truth  an  Israelite.  Consent  of 
the  soul  is  the  essential  element, 
otherwise  we  have  an  automaton, 
and  in  the  inner  kingdom  there 
are  no  automatons ;  that  is  a  world 
of  free  spirit. 

Except  your  righteousness  shall 
exceed  that  of  the  priests  and  of 
sacraments  and  of  the  memorizing 
of  creeds,  ye  can  not  enter. 

The  only  thing  that  profits  is 
the  new  birth  into  the  new  king- 
dom— the  birth  and  growth  of  the 
Christ  life.  A  man  may  say 
scores  of  Ave  Marias  and  pater- 
nosters daily,  visit  regularly  the 
communion-table,  erect  the  family 
altar,  and  read  daily  his  Bible, 
yet  not  have  the  inner  life.  He 
may  give  his  property  to  feed  the 
poor,  and  his  body  to  be  burned 
that  he  may  have  a  tablet  in  the 
Hall  of  Fame,  or  that  he  may  win 
74 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

a  far-off  heaven,  and  yet  Christ 
or  the  inner  kingdom  may  never 
have  been  known  to  him. 

The  most  pathetic  and  pitiful 
thing  in  all  the  world  is  to  see 
the  multitudes  striving  to  get  out 
of  the  kingdom  of  the  natural 
man  what  is  not  in  it. 

The  man  is  father  to  himself; 
long  before  the  child  is  the  man 
was.  Long  before  Abraham  was 
he  is.  By  the  acts  of  his  own  free- 
will he  determines  his  place  in  the 
universe.  The  law  of  attraction 
in  the  inner  world  is  as  irresisti- 
ble as  the  law  of  gravitation  in 
the  outer  world.  The  ego  as  it 
comes  to  its  birth  in  the  kingdom 
of  the  natural  man  goes  to  its 
own.  I  can  not  gravitate  by  an 
arbitrary  will  in  the  non-material 
and  spiritual  world,  but  I  can  de- 
termine my  character,  and  what- 
ever and  wherever  that  is  it  must 
75 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

be  obedient  to  the  law  that  draws 
it.  It  goes  more  certainly  and 
swiftly  to  its  place  than  the  atom 
in  the  forming  crystal. 

Evolution  is  a  sword  that  cuts 
both  ways.  It  chooses,  it  con- 
demns. The  fittest  survive. 
There  are  many  called  but  few 
chosen. 

Punishment  comes,  but  it  is 
largely  within;  degeneracy  is, 
through  persistent  wrongdoing, 
the  law  of  nature,  fixed,  inevita- 
ble. If  a  man  will  not  choose 
to  ascend  he  loses  his  power  to 
ascend,  and  must  be  reborn.  God 
never  abandons  a  soul.  Tho  I 
make  my  bed  in  hell  thou  art 
there.  The  soul  may  lose  sight 
of  God,  but  God  never  of  the 
soul. 

He  lights  the  sun  and  sweeps 

the  universe  that  He  may  find  the 

missing  coin.     He  goes  after  the 

lost  sheep,  leaving  the  ninety  and 

76 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

nine ;  He  yearns  for  the  returning 
prodigal.  His  is  untiring,  infinite 
love.  More  valuable  to  Him  is 
the  most  worthless  of  men  than 
many  sheep  to  the  human  shep- 
herd. There  is  pain  in  the  Fa- 
ther's heart  until  the  wanderer 
returns ;  nor  will  that  pain  cease 
until  somewhere  and  somehow  in 
the  universe  the  last  wanderer  has 
returned. 


77 


IV 

The  scientist  is  short- sigh  ted 
and  narrow-sighted  who  walls 
science  in  at  the  boundary  of  his 
senses — a  mole  accounting  for 
phenomena,  and  leaving  out  the 
eye ;  a  Laura  Bridgeinan  account- 
ing for  whatever  came  into  her 
life  by  her  two  or  three  physical 


Foolish  wise  men,  not  to  know 
that  the  surest  of  all  proofs  is  to 
be  looked  for  in  inner  experience ; 
that  the  most  real  things  in  the 
world  are  made  clear  not  by  phys- 
ical proof,  but  by  life!  Darwin 
reached  the  point  where  poetry 
and  music  were  little  to  him ;  yet 
the  world  of  music  and  of  beauty 
are  more  certain  than  is  Mont 
78 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

Blanc  or  Mount  Washington ;  but 
there  is  only  one  way  to  know 
them,  and  that  is  to  grow  the  fac- 
ulties of  music  and  beauty. 

To  the  Roman  soldiers  who  may 
have  heard  it,  how  unsubstantial 
was  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount; 
yet  its  truths  of  the  brotherhood 
of  man,  of  the  fatherhood  of  God, 
of  meekness,  of  loving,  of  justice, 
of  faith  in  the  inner  things,  out- 
lasted the  Eoman  armies,  saw  the 
empire  ground  to  dust,  and  their 
speaker,  nineteen  hundred  years 
afterward,  by  far  the  most  potent 
personality  that  ever  lived.  The 
mother's  love  will  outpull  gravity, 
and  yet  what  scientist  has  chemic- 
ally analyzed  it,  or  what  dissect - 
ing-knife  has  revealed  its  where- 
abouts? There  are  brute  women 
to  whom  this  love  is  "unthink- 
able," "unknowable,"  but  let 
them  grow  the  mother-heart,  and 
then  they  can  think  it,  know  it. 
79 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

Foolish,  wise  men,  ye  can  dis- 
cern the  shadow  of  things ;  look 
up  and  behold  the  substance! 
Kochefort  said  to  Gambetta: 
"  Deafness  is  not  politics. "  When 
will  scientists  learn  that  true 
science  must  have  eyes  and  ears 
open  to  all  experience  within  as 
well  as  without  ? 

Once  scientists  among  moles 
held  a  congress,  and  learnedly  re- 
solved that  they  would  believe  in 
nothing  that  could  not  be  sub- 
mitted for  proof  to  their  four 
senses.  One  learned  mole  with 
bated  breath  said:  "There  must 
be  something  above  our  four 
senses.  I  one  day  broke  through 
the  crust  of  the  earth  and  felt 
strange  sensations,  and  had  a 
glimmering  in  the  rudiments 
called  eyes  by  our  older  philos- 
ophers." "  Xonsense !  "  said  a 
grayhead  among  them.  "Let  us 
80 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

have  no  transcendentalism ;  every- 
thing that  is  must  be  explained 
by  sound,  or  by  touch,  or  by 
smell,  or  by  the  taste.  All  this 
talk  of  a  great  central  sun  with 
light,  making  landscapes  and  from 
which  all  things  come,  we  have 
no  way  of  proving ;  and  hence  to 
believe  it,  or  to  admit  it  as  an 
element  in  accounting  for  things, 
is  unscientific.  The  scientific 
method,  let  us  never  forget,  is  to 
account  for  all  things  by  the 
elements  which  come  within  the 
range  of  our  four  senses  and  the 
reasoning  based  upon  these  per- 
ceptions." 

So  it  happens  that  to  this  day 
in  the  cosmic  science  accepted 
among  moles  the  sun  has  nothing 
to  do  with  the  growth  of  plants, 
the  formation  of  coal-beds,  and 
the  rotation  of  the  seasons. 

How    imperfect    that    history 
6  81 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

that  would  content  itself  with 
writing  a  biography  of  the  acorn, 
and  never  take  into  account  the 
oak  that  comes  from  the  acorn 
and  for  which  the  acorn  exists! 
The  oak  reveals  the  acorn ;  with- 
out the  oak  the  acorn  is  not  ex- 
plicable. How  can  any  one  un- 
derstand the  evolution  of  man 
and  not  consider  the  vastly  greater 
segment  of  his  nature,  which  is 
the  non-material  and  spiritual? 
The  scientist  believes  in  the  inde- 
structibility of  matter.  The  step 
is  a  short  one  to  the  belief  in  the 
indestructibility  of  spirit.  He  be- 
lieves in  substance  infinitely  ex- 
tended ;  the  step  is  not  a  long  one 
to  belief  in  the  personality  that  is 
infinitely  extended.  He  believes 
that  in  all  matter  is  a  "  thinking 
substance."  Is  it  harder  to  be- 
lieve that  over  and  in  all  things  is 
a  thinking  spirit?  *  The  scientist 
*  "  We  adhere  firmly  to  the  pure,  un- 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

endows  matter  with  the  powers  it 
needs  to  do  all  these  things,  and 
then  says  it  does  all  these  things. 
Yet  science,  when  it  conies  to 
know,  when  it  comes  to  take  in 
all  the  facts,  to  go  deep  enough, 
and  wide  enough,  and  far  enough, 
will  be  the  arbiter.  Creed,  dog- 
ma, authority,  must  give  way 
to  it.  Magellan  said:  "The 
Church  declares  the  world  is  flat, 
but  I  have  seen  its  shadow  on  the 
moon,  and  I  had  rather  believe  a 
shadow  than  the  Church."  That 
is  true  only  when  the  Church 
makes  provision  for  but  a  part  of 
the  truth,  and  when  science  is 

equivocal  monism  of  Spinoza:  Matter, 
or  infinitely  extended  substance,  and 
spirit  (or  energy),  or  sensitive  and  think- 
ing substance,  are  the  two  fundamen- 
tal attributes  or  principal  properties 
of  the  all-embracing  divine  essence  of 
the  world,  the  universal  substance." — 
ERNST  HAECKEL,  "  The  Riddle  <tf  the 
Universe,"  p.  21. 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

true  to  itself.  The  assumptions 
of  science  and  the  assumptions 
of  the  Church  will  have  to  be  cor- 
rected by  experience,  the  experi- 
ence of  the  whole  man. 

Science  has  yet  so  to  enlarge 
its  borders  that  it  will  grasp  a 
supreme  truth  like  this  one :  The 
Christ  idea  supports  our  experi- 
ence more  fully,  answers  more 
questions,  meets  more  necessities, 
fills  out  more  completely  the 
deepest  aspirations,  and  awakens 
higher  motives  than  all  other 
ideas  combined.  Science  is  not 
so  far  from  grasping  this  great 
truth  as  it  seems  to  be. 


Christ  is  not  an  idealism,  but  a 
living,  throbbing,  visible,  audible 
Being — the  real  Christ ;  the  body 
in  Galilee  was  the  shadow,  the 
outward  shell  that  could  be 
crushed.  The  One  now  coming 
is  the  Mighty  One  who  is  out  of 
the  reach  of  stones  and  spears,  the 
type-life  and  potent  King  of  the 
kingdom  of  the  spiritual  man. 
And  he  who  hath  Him  also  hath 
power.  "  Ye  shall  receive  power  " 
(Acts  i.  8).  "Stephen,  full  of 
faith  and  power"  (Acts  vi.  8). 
"The  kingdom  of  God  is  not  in 
word,  but  in  power"  (1  Cor.  iv. 
20).  Says  Paul  of  those  at  Cor- 
inth who  found  fault  with  him :  "  I 
will  know  not  their  speech,  but 
85 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

their  power  "  (1  Cor.  iv.  19).  He 
who  has  not  power  is  not  of  the 
kingdom  of  the  spiritual  man,  for 
"  whatsoever  is  born  of  God  over- 
cometh  the  world."  This  Christ 
is  a  present  force  in  the  world, 
producing  changes,  quickening 
and  directing  energies,  and  must 
be  reckoned  with.  Christian  civ- 
ilization also  proves  itself  by  its 
power. 

But  to  see  Him  this  time  we 
must  have  eyes  and  ears  fitted  to 
recognize  the  manifestations  of 
the  inner  kingdom — the  kingdom 
of  all  first  causes  and  real  forces. 
He  is  not  coming  with  the  noise 
of  trumpets,  nor  with  whirlwinds, 
nor  with  earthquakes;  but  with 
the  silence  of  the  growth  of  the 
mustard-seed,  of  the  leaven,  of 
the  grain  of  corn  reaching  up  to 
the  blade  and  full  corn  in  the  ear. 

There  can  be  nothing  more 
86 


NEXT  8TEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

manifest  to-day  to  the  optic  nerve 
of  the  spiritual  man  than  is  this 
coming.  The  lightning  flashing 
from  the  east  to  the  west  is  not 
nearly  so  manifest. 

Every  event  is  alive  with  His 
appearing.  His  presence  is  the 
most  evident  thing  in  the  world, 
the  very  splendor  of  the  light 
hides  Him.  "  Lo,  I  am  with  you 
alway !  "  is  now  known  by  millions 
to  be  a  vital,  stupendous  fact.  He 
is  nearer  to  such  a  heart  than  the 
mother  to  the  babe. 

This  coming  is  in  harmony  with 
recognizable  law;  belief  in  it  is 
logic,  is  common  sense.  It  would 
be  extraordinary,  miraculous,  if 
He  did  not  now  come.  The  intel- 
lect is  not  ignored.  We  see  how 
God  has  been  able  to  care  for  and 
develop  man  from  the  protozoon 
on  up  through  these  numberless 
ages.  Judging  His  profound 
wisdom  and  power  and  unity  of 
87 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

purpose  and  love  by  the  result, 
we  reason  toward  trust  that  casts 
out  fear  and  gives  prophetic  vis- 
ion. We  reason  easily  and  natu- 
rally that  yearning  after  the  more 
perfect  fits  the  spiritual  proto- 
plasm for  the  new  birth  and  the 
new  senses,  enabling  us  to  know 
things  spiritual  as  we  now  know 
material  things. 

When  it  is  our  will  to  do  His 
will,  we  become  the  reincarnation 
of  Christ,  for  "Christ  is  formed 
in  us."  When  the  dominating 
ones  in  a  community,  in  a  church, 
in  a  nation,  in  the  world,  are  of 
this  sort,  you  see  Christ  reincar- 
nated in  all  these.  Moses,  David, 
John,  Plato,  Augustine,  Savona- 
rola, Bunyan,  Emerson  were  great 
ideal  dreamers,  but  they  were  also 
geniuses  of  common  sense.  These 
men  were  primarily  men  of  faith 
and  great  good  sense,  not  of  cre- 
dulity. They  had  the  power  and 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

common  sense  to  know  that  there 
were  voices  within,  and  to  with- 
draw their  attention  from  the 
voices  without  and  give  the  real 
world  a  chance  to  be  heard.  They 
knew  that  the  universe  would  fall 
into  chaos  and  that  stars  would 
be  ground  to  dust  if  these  worlds 
were  disobedient  to  law.  They 
knew  that  there  was  an  inner  uni- 
verse, and  that  there  were  inner 
laws  infinitely  more  important. 
They  knew  it  to  be  the  A  B  C  of 
common  sense  to  conform  to  these 
inner  laws.  Christ  was  and  is  the 
embodiment  of  common  sense,  of 
sanity ;  and  so  His  followers  be- 
come as  they  grow  into  the  new 
creatures  of  the  kingdom  of  the 
spiritual  man. 

There  are  voices  within  distinct 
and  clear  to  those  who  have  ears 
to  hear ;  clearer  than  silver  bells 
ringing  up  in  air  at  midnight. 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

One  who  has  grown  this  spiritual 
nature  ceases  to  talk  about  the  in- 
ward world  being  silent  or  hid — 
yet  there  are  clouds  and  doubts. 
These  things  must  needs  be — these 
assailed  Christ  to  the  last.  And 
if  angels  do  not  also  follow,  min- 
istering to  us,  it  is  because  we 
have  not  reached  the  plane  of 
spiritual  seeing.  Help  is  always 
near,  and  it  should  not  be  neces- 
sary for  a  prophet's  hand  to  touch 
our  eyes  to  enable  us  to  see  the 
mountains  covered  with  heavenly 
allies,  or  to  enable  us  to  know  the 
signs  of  the  times.  There  is  no 
room  for  fear.  Bismarck  spoke 
with  the  accents  of  a  prophet 
when  he  said:  "Germany  fears 
nothing  but  God."  The  cry  is 
gone  out  to  the  ends  of  the  earth : 
"  Great  is  the  soul  of  man ;  make 
way,  make  way !  " 

These  signs  of  a  mighty  change 
90 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

are  deepening  and  multiplying  as 
we  swing  into  the  new  century. 
The  Jewish  people  were  to  be 
trodden  underfoot  until  the  inner 
kingdom  of  love  should  be  estab- 
lished ;  that  barbarism  of  hate  is 
now  rapidly  dying. 

Were  we  wise  enough,  events 
all  around  us  would  be  to  us 
prophecies  of  the  coming  of  the 
triumphant  God,  of  the  kingdom 
of  the  spiritual  man. 

Watch!  By  watching  we  de- 
velop the  ability  to  discern  things 
beyond  the  senses. 

Above  every  cloud  the  light  is 
now  breaking ;  the  earth  is  rolling 
into  the  dawn  of  a  marvelous 
day. 

The  yoke  of  ecclesiasticism  is 
giving  way  to  the  yoke  of  Christ. 
Creed  is  the  memory  of  the 
Church.  The  real  yoke  of  Christ 
is  not  a  burden;  it  has  wings. 
He  is  sweetness  and  light.  Let 
91 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

criticism  have  its  way.  The  test- 
ing-time has  come,  give  it  wel- 
come. A  man  must  now  stand  a 
vital  Christian,  or  a  hypocrite, 
or  an  open  enemy — that  will  be  a 
great  gain.  Creeds  to-day  are 
trying  to  understand  one  another. 
Christianity  is  being  reduced  to 
its  least  common  denominator,  a 
living  Christ.  The  Church  is 
finding  it  harder  and  harder  to 
think  of  itself  as  a  great-great- 
grandchild. It  is  coming  to  be- 
lieve in  its  present  experiences, 
and  to  write  its  own  creeds  for 
to-day,  and  not  for  to-morrow. 
Since  God  is,  the  Church  and  the 
world  will  not  necessarily  fall  to 
pieces  if  they  let  go  their  props 
and  scaffoldings.  If  there  be  no 
God,  creeds  and  forms  and  cere- 
monies are  necessities.  A  living 
God  is  efficient  and  sufficient. 

In  the  churches  we  are — many 
93 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

of  us — so  busy  working  for  God 
that  we  do  not  take  time  to  look 
around  and  see  God;  and  are 
making  so  great  din  preaching  and 
praying  that  we  are  not  able  to 
hear  Him  talk ;  are  so  busy  look- 
ing far  away  for  signs  of  Christ's 
coming  that  we  do  not  see  that 
He  is  already  here,  is  the  most 
manifest  Being  on  earth  to  those 
who  have  eyes  to  see  and  ears  to 
hear,  hidden  only  by  the  abun- 
dance of  light. 

Now  we  begin  to  see  the  absurd- 
ity— all  of  us  who  believe  in  the 
Fatherhood  of  God  and  the  broth- 
erhood of  man — of  casting  out 
one  another,  and  are  beginning 
in  earnest  to  join  hands  to  bring 
about  on  earth  the  perfected  king- 
dom of  love.  "Master,  we  saw 
one  casting  out  devils  in  thy 
name,  and  we  forbade  him  because 
he  followeth  not  us,"  and  the  re- 
proof of  long  ago  we  begin  to  UD- 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

derstand:  "Forbid  him  not,  for 
he  that  is  not  against  us  is  on  our 
part."  We  are  rapidly  learning 
that  while  it  may  not  be  possible 
to  be  of  one  mind,  it  is  possible 
and  necessary  to  be  of  one  heart. 
We  begin  to  grasp  the  meaning 
of  Christ  when  He  said  that  the 
world  would  not  believe  that  He 
was  sent  of  the  Father  until  they 
saw  the  vital  unity  in  the  inner 
kingdom — that  the  disciples  are 
one  as  the  Father  and  Son  are  one. 
In  the  inner  kingdom  we  ask  only 
for  right  disposition ;  this  is  infi- 
nitely better  even  than  right  think- 
ing. For  those  who  are  rightly 
disposed  go  forward  and  upward 
even  while  they  sleep. 

Christ  is  coming  to  the  great 
business  centers,  to  the  real  heart 
of  the  world.  Thus  often  talks 
editorially  that  typical  newspaper 
of  the  masses,  the  New  York 
94 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

Evening  Journal,  to  its  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  readers : 

"  Think  every  day  of  Christ. 

"  Every  man,  apart  from  all  re- 
ligious belief,  can  be  made  a  bet- 
ter man  by  earnest  study  and  daily 
contemplation  of  the  character  of 
Jesus. 

"  Seen  only  as  a  man,  His  char- 
acter better  than  any  other  is  cal- 
culated to  inspire  other  men. 

"  COURAGE,  that  all  men  ad- 
mire. Christ  possessed  it  to  the 
uttermost  limit.  Modest  courage 
that  could  not  boast,  and  that 
death  could  not  move. 

"Kindness,  that  makes  the 
world  habitable.  Christ  was  its 
personification  on  earth. 

"  Compassion,  eloquence,  pur- 
pose unchangeable,  charity,  for- 
giveness of  others'  weakness  all 
may  be  studied  in  Christ  as  in  no 
other  man  that  has  ever  lived  on 
earth." 

95 


NEXT  8TEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

There  is  no  more  unfailing  sign 
of  the  nearness  of  Christ  than  the 
growth  of  loving  beyond  the  pro- 
vincialism of  the  family,  the  clan, 
the  class,  the  nation.  "Ye  are 
brethren. "  All  things  in  common 
was  not  an  impracticable  dream, 
but  a  fundamental  law  of  the  king- 
dom of  the  spiritual  Man.  We 
must  organize  sooner  or  later  on 
that  basis.  We  are  speeding  on- 
ward toward  that  sun.  We  feel 
its  growing  heat.  If  we  do  not 
love  our  brethren  whom  we  have 
seen,  how  can  we  love  God  whom 
we  have  not  seen?  What  do  ye 
mean  by  the  communion  of  saints, 
ye  who  pray  it  Sunday  by  Sunday? 
Spell  it  out.  Brotherhood  is  not 
a  fiction  of  the  imagination.  Com- 
munion is  not  a  Pentecostal  fan- 
tasy. A  living  Christ  is  to-day 
more  than  ever  on  earth  an  aggres- 
sively unifying  force. 

"  Inasmuch  as  ye  did  it  to  one 
96 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

of  the  least  of  these,"  ye  did  it 
unto  all  and  to  the  Father  and  to 
Me.  The  spiritual  universe  is  of 
one  substance,  is  a  unit.  "At 
that  day  ye  shall  know  that  I  am 
in  the  Father,  and  ye  in  me,  and 
I  in  you." 

Immensely  human  and  natural 
was  Christ's  message  to  man — 
Brotherhood  and  Fatherhood,  and 
by  those  tokens  we  recognize  His 
present  footsteps. 

Judge  these  things  as  you  would 
the  motions  of  the  hands  of  the 
clock.  Look  back  a  half-dozen 
centuries  and  make  comparisons. 
War  is  recognized  more  and  more 
as  a  barbarism,  and  its  end  is  over 
yonder  hill.  The  court  of  nations 
to  settle  wrongs  is  looming  above 
the  horizon — is  already  holding 
its  sessions.  The  nation  that 
loves  its  fellow  nations  is  also 
born  of  God.  The  Golden  Eule 
7  97 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

is  finding  its  place  in  international 
diplomacy. 

The  humanities  are  in  order. 
Over  one  hundred  and  seven  mil- 
lion dollars  were  contributed  in 
the  United  States  for  educational 
and  other  charities  within  the  last 
year.*  Nearly  two  million  dol- 

*  Gifts  and  bequests,  each  amount- 
ing to  $5,000  or  over,  bestowed  or  be- 
coming operative  in  the  United  States 
in  the  following  years: 

1893 $29,000,000 

1894 32,000,000 

1895 32,800,000 

1896 27,000,000 

1897 45,000,000 

1898 38,000,000 

1899 62,750,000 

1900 47,500,000 

1901 107,360,000 

Total $421,410,000 

This  list  excludes  the  ordinary  denom- 
inational contributions  for  educational, 
benevolent,  and  religious  purposes,  or 
State  and  municipal  appropriations  to 
public  and  sectarian  institutions,  and 
the  grants  of  Congress  for  various  meas- 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

lars  were  given  to  suffering  Gal- 
veston;  and  Carnegie's  immense 
benefactions  are  but  one  of  the 
many  indications  of  the  full  dawn- 
ing of  the  day  of  living  for  others. 
A  single  individual  the  other 
day,  a  member  of  an  unpopular 
race,  is  wronged  in  France,  and 
all  the  world  is  aroused,  and 
flashes  thunderbolts  of  wrath  un- 
der oceans  and  across  continents 
until  there  is  a  beginning  to  right 
the  wrong.  Mankind  is  rapidly 
becoming 

"...  one  in  spirit,  and  in  instinct 

bears  along 
Around  the  earth's  electric  circle  the 

swift  flash  of  right  and  wrong." 

The  marvelous  sowing  about 
the  Sea  of  Galilee  is  reaching  its 
ripening.  The  leaven  is  leaven- 
ing the  whole  lump.  The  mus- 
tard-seed reappears  in  hundreds 

ures  of  relief. — From  Applcton's  Cyclo- 
pedia Annual  for  1901. 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

and  hundreds  of  millions  of  seed. 
Cuba  is  helped  to  freedom  for  its 
own  sake;  the  Russian  Czar — he 
at  least  in  Eussia — in  sincerity 
says:  "War  should  end."  In 
business  it  is  ceasing  to  be  a 
maxim  that  the  benefit  of  the  one 
is  ever  opposed  to  the  benefit  of 
the  many.  We  are  learning  that 
the  Golden  Eule  and  the  law  of 
self  -  preservation  run  parallel. 
Applied  to  commercialism,  the 
Golden  Rule  is  so  to  make  money 
as  to  give  a  benefit  also  to  him 
from  whom  you  make  it ;  and  that, 
too,  is  common  sense.  The  chil- 
dren of  the  inner  kingdom  never 
crowd :  the  more,  the  more  room. 
In  all  these  things  we  see  just 
the  beginnings  of  the  results  of 
His  coming :  all  men  of  one  fam- 
ily, God  the  Father,  and  Christ 
the  eldest  Brother ;  the  sacredness 
of  truth,  of  the  soul,  of  all  life; 
the  reality  of  the  inner  world. 
100 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

Man  has  climbed  up  in  count- 
less ages  by  the  slow  processes  of 
evolution  to  where  he  can  use  the 
powers  of  nature  through  his  brain 
— becoming  a  coworker  with  God 
in  guiding  the  processes  of  evolu- 
tion. Now,  being  reborn  into  the 
inner  kingdom,  he  starts  on  a 
new  and  infinitely  higher  destiny. 
Eye  hath  not  seen,  nor  ear  heard, 
the  things  that  are  laid  up  for 
those  thus  born. 

With  a  boundless  universe  with- 
in and  without,  and  an  infinite 
God,  and  with  an  eternity  to  live 
and  work  in,  many,  many  things 
can  take  place,  and  it  is  God's 
good  pleasure  that  they  shall  nev- 
er take  place  to  our  hurt.  The 
creature  of  the  kingdom  of  the 
spiritual  man  is  injury-proof. 

And  the  command  is :    "  Be  ye 

perfect  as  your  Father  is  perfect "  j 

ever  approaching  Him  in  countless 

ages  and  reaching  Him  at  the  end 

101 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

of  eternity,  had  eternity  an  end} 
but  since  it  has  no  end,  in  what- 
ever distant  period  and  however 
great  the  distance  between  us,  God 
is  still  the  Infinite  one  and  we  the 
finite  ones. 

Ah,  how  men  err !  The  Eoman 
Emperor,  after  his  awful  massacre 
of  Christians,  set  up  a  column  in 
memory  of  the  extinction  of  the 
last  Christian.  But  the  Roman 
empire  is  in  dust,  and  now  the 
world  is  rapidly  becoming  wholly 
Christian ;  and  were  that  emperor 
alive,  he,  quite  likely,  would  ap- 
plaud the  result.  God's  step- 
pings  are  from  star  to  star.  Who 
knoweth  His  counsel? 

From  the  pen  of  Garrison  shot 
the  thunderbolts  of  heaven.  For 
a  time,  at  no  spot  on  earth  did 
the  wrath  of  God  so  blaze  and 
flash  as  in  the  eye  of  Wendell 
Phillips.  But  we  must  study  to 
103 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

judge  God  aright  inunfol ding  his- 
tory. We  ever  misread  his  works. 
We  see  in  the  storm-cloud  a 
messenger  of  His  fury,  and  in  the 
lightning  flash  His  consuming  an- 
ger; but,  instead,  that  cloud  is 
big  with  mercy  and  breaks  in 
blessings,  and  its  lightning  proves 
to  be  but  one  of  God's  ways  for 
burning  poison  out  of  the  air  and 
creating  life-giving  forces.  Time 
is  God's  interpreter.  The  chil- 
dren of  the  Southern  slaveholders 
now  see  that  Phillips  and  Garri- 
son and  Beecher  were  God's  mes- 
sengers of  love. 

We  look  back  all  along  the  con- 
flict of  the  ages  of  evolution;  we 
now  see,  in  the  changing  of  the 
dunghill  into  shrubs  and  roses  and 
into  food,  the  prophecy  of  all,  and 
we  marvel  at  our  blindness  in  not 
knowing  that  the  most  manifest 
thing  in  all  the  world,  and  at  all 
times,  was  God  the  Father  work- 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

ing  for  good,  whom  again  and 
again  we  have  compelled  to  cry 
out  in  pain  (for  God  can  suffer 
pain) :  "  The  reproaches  of  men 
have  broken  My  heart. "  Looking 
backward,  we  begin  to  see  the 
good  in  everything,  that  there  has 
not  been  a  fall  of  a  sparrow  with- 
out accompanying  provision  for 
the  sparrow,  and  we  grow  enthu- 
siastic and  shout  with  the  martyr 
of  old :  "  Glory  be  to  God  for  ev- 
erything that  happens !  "  Hand- 
in-hand  we  walk  with  the  great 
Father  over  the  ages  of  history, 
riding  victorious  over  mountain- 
tops. 

We  see,  modifying  the  words  of 
John  Fiske,  that  in  the  roaring 
loom  of  time,  out  of  the  endless 
web  of  events,  strand  by  strand, 
was  woven  more  and  more  clearly 
the  living  garment  of  God. 

When  Christ  had  passed  beyond 
104 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

the  grave  He  said  "Mary,"  and 
Mary  said  "  Master  " ;  they  spake, 
they  understood,  tho  death  and 
the  grave  intervened.  The  world 
of  the  physical  senses  has  no 
barrier  that  hinders  knowing 
in  the  kingdom  of  the  spiritual 
man. 

The  kingdom  of  the  psychic 
nature  of  man — the  kingdom  of 
light,  love,  conscience,  true  spiri- 
tuality, of  the  clear  recognition  of 
Christ  and  of  the  Fatherhood  of 
God  and  the  brotherhood  of  man 
— the  next  step  in  evolution,  the 
present  step  is  at  hand.  Now  we 
see  through  a  glass  darkly,  then 
we  shall  see  face  to  face ;  now  we 
know  in  part,  but  then  we  shall 
know  even  as  we  are  known. 
Christ's  hand  is  on  the  latch  of 
the  world's  door.  Gladstone 
spoke  but  sober  truth  when  he 
said:  "At  this  moment  Christ  is 
105 


NEXT  STEP  IN  EVOLUTION 

undeniably  the  prime  and  central 
power  of  the  world." 

"  The  Wandering  Jew  "  is  near 
the  end  of  his  wanderings. 

As  reasoned  the  Apostle :  *  If 
the  Gentiles  were  cut  out  of  the 
olive-tree  which  is  wild  by  nature, 
and  were  grafted  contrary  to  na- 
ture into  a  good  olive-tree,  how 
much  more  shall  the  Jews,  which 
be  the  natural  branches,  be  grafted 
into  their  own  olive-tree?  For 
God  is  able  to  graft  them  in  again. 
For  I  would  not,  brethren,  that 
you  should  be  ignorant  of  this  mys- 
tery, lest  ye  should  be  wise  in 
your  own  conceits :  that  blindness 
in  part  has  happened  to  Israel, 
until  the  fulness  of  the  Gentiles  be 
come  in.  AND  SO  ALL  IS- 
EAEL  SHALL  BE  SAVED. 

*Rom.  xi. 
106 


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The  Gordian 
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tions as  these :  Is  there  a  God  ?  Is  the 
universe  the  work  of  a  personal  Creator  ? 
Whence  came  the  order  and  perfection 
of  the  universe,  instinct  in  animals,  in- 
telligence and  conscience  in  man  ?  How 
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COMMENDED     BY     LEADERS     IN 

Jesus  the  Jew 

BY    HARRIS     WEINSTOCK 

Introduction    by 
Prof.  David  Starr  Jordan 

Ten  frank  talks  pointing  out  the  need 
and  the  way  for  mutual  understanding 
and  tolerance  betw'n  Christian  and  Jew 

GENUINE  PRAISE 

NON-JEWISH 

R.  Heber  Newton,  D.D.,  New  York: 
"Its  catholicity  of  thought  and  spirits, 
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noble  book  ;  a  prophecy  of  the  time  to 
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justice  and  sympathy.  It  is  likely  to  con- 
quer many  prejudices  and  encourage  mu- 
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"  Deborah"  :  "  Your  views  are  broad  and 
noble,  and  commend  themselves  to  every 
generous  man,  Jew  or  Christian." 
JEWISH 

Rabbi  C.  A.  Rubenstein,  Baltimore : 
'•It  cannot  but  relieve  the  strain  wherever 
it  exists  in  the  religious  and  social  rela- 
tions between  the  Jew  and  the  Christian." 

Rabbi  Isaac  L.  Rypins,  St.  Paul :  "I 
am  now  circulating  the  book  among  my 
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